Is there a risk that custom URLs for Facebook and Google+ will compete with your own site?

Question

Is there any downside to registering a Facebook page custom URL or Google Plus custom URL? My primary goal is to drive traffic to my site.

Is there a risk of these social media custom URLs competing with my own domain's website and cannibalizing my own traffic? Specifically, I'm imagining the scenario where my Google Plus / Facebook page are ranked higher than my own domain in SERPs:

plus.google.com/+Example
facebook.com/Example
www.example.com

I mean Facebook and Google want traffic so they can sell ads and I want the same thing. I plan on having social media pages, but wondering if it's better to not get the custom URL. Or do the benefits outweigh the risks?

Answer 1

Is there any downside to registering a Facebook page custom URL or Google Plus custom URL?

No, this will help users more readily identify links and increase their likelihood of clicking on them.

Is there a risk of these social media custom URLs competing with my own domain's website and cannibalizing my own traffic?

Not likely, the domain would still be facebook.com or plus.google.com so content would be indexed under those sites, not www.example.com. This is not any different than having a user string instead of a custom URL, and that's not an issue with those either. Unless you have a large amount of duplicate content on both these social sites and your site, there wouldn't be any cause for concern.

Or do the benefits outweigh the risks?

There really aren't any risks, it's just a different URL structure that's more easily recognized and remembered by users.

If you want your own site to rank higher than your social media pages (custom URL or not), then you'll need to provide more relevant content and external links to it (including links from these social sites, which are signals to search engines).